The Main Problem Of Self Check Out Supermarkets

Rory Sutherland tells what's the main psychological problem of self check out supermarkets.

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[KXMKR]

Ex retail worker here. Our largest theft was crates of alcohol. Customer would have three in their trolley. They would scan and pay for one and walk out with three. They put security tape on the boxes. It did nothing. The tape extremely difficult to remove, so the till runners would simply ignore it. The tape set off the security alarm every time, which led to the security guards ignoring them. Customers quickly realized this, so as well as their two crates of free beer they would go clothes shopping as well and throw in some outfits. The till runners and security guards would see the big red crates of beer and ignore the alarms. If you had a big crate of beer in your trolley, you could pretty much just walk right through all the security with a trolley full of stolen goods and nobody would ever bother checking. All because managers wanted to save £8 per hour.

[kopkl]

At the end there. ‘Piracy is a service issue’ -Gabe Newall
Stealing isn’t because it’s easy to steal. Making stealing harder doesn’t work as well as making buying easier

[celsius]

He’s definitely done it more than once.

[nuttysquirrel]

I work in one of the 'Big 4' supermarkets and I can confirm that stealing, or 'walk outs' as we euphamistically call them, are rife. These self scan machines are put in NOT for the shoppers convenience as our head offices tell us but to save staff wages. We have 20 of these where I work and we are always undermanned to cope with the everyday issues of say, things not scanning, items not weighting, items without a bar code, etc.; so, for the sake of an extra person at £12ph, for 4hrs = £48, it only takes one 'walk out' of, say, £50, and the shop loses. This happens quite a few times per shift but the 'office bods' still persist in cutting staff.

[allenshepard]

Worse yet
1) Walmart reduce the number of checkout lines.
2) They have machines that do not take cash.
3) Where is the reduction in price for using self checkout.
4) Checkout is not full service. To get cash back, stamps or something else.

[apock]

Best words there.

If something isnt working, and ive tried everything, and NOBODY is around to help.... why bother at that point.

[ohmyonionpie]

what i really hate is that theyve closed all the real ques with real people, there might be one or two open at most at rush hour, so rather than being a choice of "i only have 5 items lets do it myself real quick" its turned into "i literally have no choice but to go to self checkout cause there are no cashes open"
theyve replaced paid employees with you, the customer, doing it all for free now.

[dhvale]

Me and my Dad find ourselves talking about this often. He's 65, very old school in the sense that technology advancements are often at odds with him. I'm 30 and for the longest time never really had any issue with self service checkouts with the exception of job losses. These days I find myself absolutely despising self service checkouts and by extension the supermarkets who utilise them. Morrisons in the UK for example, astronomically expensive, in my local Morrisons past 6pm you're down to zero manned checkouts and one member of staff (if lucky) jumping between self service checkouts sorting out the multitude of problems from age verification to items not scanning properly etc. they're passing on the labour to the customer, while hiking their prices all the same. In addition it hastens a cashless society which is beyond dysoptic, every single transaction you make monitored and traceable. The freedom that comes with cash is so overlooked for the sake of a convenience which is in reality not all that convenient at all.

[cognisant]

I actually asked an attendant to help me with an item that wasn't scanning and after we had both tried everything to get the crumpled barcode to scan she told me to just bag it.

[marcuskarlsson]

The impressive part is that the last part, "if it's not easy to pay I'm not going to pay at all" is the basis for the whole pirate movement.

So we already hade this information before self checkouts, but we still are surprised by the results.

[emilyfaircloth-pmdv]

You also need to be vigilant at the self check out.. it’s very easy to double scan an item.. some of the club card/discount card discounts aren’t applied consistently. This is potentially Supermarkets make up the shortfall from shoplifters.

[CATX]

So true! And now they are eliminating or not staffing the regular check out lines. Forcing lines and huge wastes of time into the self-serve. Something ALWAYS goes wrong in the self check out and no help...

[Stein]

Supermarkets are charging so much these days, they don't care if people steal from self service. Why else is it that they refuse to staff the check out areas?

[DerZocker]

my stuff isn't getting cheaper by self check out, but they are saving money

so i don't use them

[longshotkdb]

" Shoplifters of the world,
unite and take over . . . "

[roanchis]

Buying energy drinks or booze also makes it kinda redundant because you need someone to come along. Makes a 15 seconds 4 item shop into a few minutes

[jamesnewing]

Push back, refuse to use them and this issue goes away! Keeps more people in work too.

[BravosReviews]

The real issue I have with self check out is that companies are using it as a way to hire less cashiers not as a way to speed up the process so I end up waiting the exact amount of time I would have if not longer because now they don’t have cashiers to take me

[FructusSum]

Local supermarket you need yo pay for parking but you can get it back at the tile. Fine. But it doesn't work on the self checkout, they tried yo send me to the self check out many times when they are busy and every time i ask if the car park tickets are accepted yet. And get a no and they get a "then nope" "its only a euro" "yes it is only a euro so you should fix the machine, i am not in a rush"